“You weren’t there?” said Vale, her anger winning out over her grief for the moment. She grabbed Modan by the shoulders and slammed the younger woman against the bulkhead. “You left him somewhere and you don’t know if he’s dead?”

  Modan’s body seemed to shift suddenly in Vale’s grip. Her face elongated, her shoulders grew what looked like armored plates, and her long ropelike braids began to writhe as if they were alive.

  “Christine!” said Troi, putting a hand on her in an attempt to calm her. Vale shrugged her off.

  “He is dead,” said Modan. “He’s certainly dead. I didn’t have to see it. I know.” She was, just as obviously as Vale, in great anguish over Jaza’s loss. Her placid metallic features made a better mask than Vale’s fleshy ones, but Jaza had left a hole inside Modan as well. Vale was too caught up in her own anger and grief to know it, but to Troi it was clear.

  “Can you tell us what you mean, Ensign?” she said.

  “There’s no time, Deanna,” said Modan. Deanna?“I’ll have to show you.”

  “Show us what?” Vale asked, not relaxing her grip despite the fine golden spines that had begun to grow through Modan’s uniform to puncture Vale’s flesh.

  In response two of the tentacles on Modan’s head whipped out at Troi and Vale, attaching themselves to the women’s temples.

  “This,” said Modan, as Vale found the strength draining out of her arms and the world around her going dark. “I have to show you this.”

Chapter Eleven

   Black.

  The world was black and formless, made of something liquid that rolled over and beneath them like an ocean of molasses. They could hear voices, their own and each other’s certainly, but also in the distance, that of a man, a father they suddenly knew, talking to his young son.

  “The Prophets express their will through us, Jem,” said the man. They could suddenly see him-deep brown flesh on a big, thick-limbed body, with kindly gray eyes, standing just outside a battered building of wood and clay. Their home? “They show us what they wish but do not tell us always how to get there. Our life is to learn their will and follow it as best we can. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” said the other. They could suddenly see him too. Not older than ten years, not quite grown into his own large bones, yet he was a near-perfect copy of his father in miniature. “I think so.”

   It’s him, thought Vale. It’s Najem as a boy.

  She had never seen him this way, so innocent and small. She had never even pictured him as a child. As something pulled her awareness from the scene, she was sure she would have difficulty picturing him any other way from then on.

  “We have to hit them back,” said another voice, this time female and intense. “Every day. We have to let them know they bit off more than they can ever chew by coming here.”

  A smallish, almost elfin woman who looked as if she’d been carved out of sandalwood appeared, naked but for the sheet that covered her and half of a young, equally nude man who was also somehow Jaza.

  Vale felt her body flush as she thought of her time with him and the things he’d taught her about the placement of Bajoran ridges. Despite their evolution into close friends, this too was an image of him she would never let go.

  “They own the planet, Sumari,” he said, his voice low and very slightly slurred. He seemed a little drunk. “They can do anything they want.”

  The woman, Sumari, rolled over onto his stomach and gazed at him. “You hate them,” she said. “I know you do. For what they let happen to your mother. For what they’ve done to all of us. For the way they spit on the Prophets.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the Prophets,” he said. His face had turned to stone. “And they don’t give a damn about me.”

  “You’re wrong, Najem,” she said. “It’s the Cardassians who’ve done this to you as well. They’ve stolen your faith.” She pushed herself closer to him, her hands moving over his chest slowly. “I want to give you that back. You’re going to need it for our children.”

  He sat up sharply, inadvertently knocking her off the bed that was too small for two, and making her smile and laugh.

  “Children?” he said. “You’re not-”

  “Oh,” she said, climbing back up. “I think I am.”

  “But we’ve only…” he stammered as she smiled and continued to kiss him. “I mean, we’ve barely-”

  “Your father’s a doctor,” she said, laughing. “You should know once is enough.”

  Again Vale felt herself being pulled away and was grateful. This wasn’t for her to see somehow, and she knew it. And, really, she didn’t want to see. This was a private moment, something of Jaza’s alone. It felt wrong that anyone should know of it.

  There were other images then, other scenes-Najem and his father screaming at each other during his mother’s funeral; Sumari dying in his arms, the victim of a Cardassian disruptor blast that he still felt had been meant for him; the sniper who had killed her dying in his hands only moments later; the birth of his children, Esola for his mother and Kren for her father-but all of these moments rushed past in a blur. Something-Modan, she realized-was forcing her away.

   What was all that?she thought.

   Apocrypha, came the reply from Modan. Extra bits that weren’t intended for me but spilled over anyway. Ignore them.

  They lingered on the vision Jaza had seen-or believed he’d seen-which Vale found odd and mystical and somewhat disconcerting. She was happy when it went away.

   Here, said Modan’s voice in her mind. Here is what you need to see.

   What’s wrong with the sky?thought Vale, looking up at it and seeing for the first time the chaotically oscillating Eye of Erykon. She had gotten glimpses of it during its eruptions, mostly the odd flash or strange multicolored ripple. These were all her human physiology had let her observe. Jaza’s Bajoran genes allowed him a better view, and she was seeing that view now.

  He stood there, motionless, frozen in fear by the realization that he had stepped into the scene from his vision. Ever since his meeting with the Prophets he had wondered about the moment, sometimes dreading it, sometimes wishing it would come so that he could finally understand its meaning. Now it was here, and all he felt was the brutal cold of his own imminent mortality.

  He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think or, if he thought, it was only the one sentiment playing over and over and over in his mind.

   I’m going to die. Here. Today. In moments or in hours, I’m going to die.

  He couldn’t move. He didn’t want to do anything that would either disturb the vision or, worse perhaps, bring it to its predicted end.

  Thoughts of his friends and his loves and his many adventures now flooded his mind like a storm. His entire life was suddenly laid before him. Every valley, every peak, every blemish, every virtue, everything rushed through him in its totality, and he was left breathless.

  There was fear with all of it too, unexpected, unplanned for, and inescapable for all that. Now that his moment was finally here, he feared that he might try to avoid his fate, proving that he loved his life just a little bit more than he loved the Prophets.

  It wasn’t true. It hadn’t been true since he’d regained his faith. But the fear, the terrible fear of oblivion ravaged him all the same.

  And he still couldn’t make himself move. He was held in the grip of this moment and it wouldn’t let him go.

  Then, as they always do, the moment passed.

  The moment passed and he didn’t die. It was followed by another in which he did not die. Another moment passed and another and, defying his expectations, through each of them he still continued not to die.

  The fear didn’t leave him then, but its effects began to drain away, allowing his rational mind to reassert.